[WIR] Anarchs Unbound - Anarchy in the WOD

[CTPhipps]

Gah, I just saw that I had posted mine when I saw your post about considering Vitel and Callahan and hadn't seen the leaders of the east coast Anarch Movement. X D

Haha. Well I'd love your thoughts on the write-up.

[Gryffon15]

I liked the write up, they both seemed quite interesting to me!

[CTPhipps]

http://forum.theonyxpath.com/forum/main-category/main-forum/the-classic-world-of-darkness/vampire-the-masquerade/1388414-v5-wir-the-chicago-folios-and-let-the-streets-run-red

And the Chicago Folios/Let the streets run red WIR is now up.

[Chris24601]

Sadly, missing here is the Thaumaturgy rituals that would allow a person to hide their internet servers and websites from mortal. I think that those would have been the most useful to include in all of this and they're conspicuously absent. They should be low level ones but ones that should have had the effect of a invisible ink.

They’re absent because they’re in Rites of Blood on page 68 in the section on Anarch Hacktavist Thaumaturgy.

Fangbook, etc. are created via technomancy rituals that are a variant of the Tremere “Inscription” ritual encoded into a computer file. As a form of blood sorcery it literally doesn’t work for anyone without vitae in their veins.

So it’s not so much an oversight that it’s not in Anarchs Unbound as “it was already in another book.”

[CTPhipps]

They’re absent because they’re in Rites of Blood on page 68 in the section on Anarch Hacktavist Thaumaturgy.

Fangbook, etc. are created via technomancy rituals that are a variant of the Tremere “Inscription” ritual encoded into a computer file. As a form of blood sorcery it literally doesn’t work for anyone without vitae in their veins.

So it’s not so much an oversight that it’s not in Anarchs Unbound as “it was already in another book.”

Thanks for the info!

[Mister_Dunpeal]

You know the 'How should Thin Bloods work' thread got me looking back at the concept, and it's rather interesting how very.. 'hybrid' Thin Bloods can potentially be. Like TotB says that they can learn hedge magic. They have inceptor powers (even if its only to level 2-4 depending on your generation. They even actively encourage you to recycle 'old' powers this way!) And though the rules suggest it should be nearly impossible for them to learn Blood Magic... they still can. Possibly not the 'in-clan' types like the Tremere or Assamite practice. But there are plenty of alternatives. Heck The Anarchs have their own sorcery paths and I suspect Thin Bloods wouldn't have too much trouble learning those (nevermind that 'Blood Magic' implied that Tremere Thaumaturgy may no longer be as exclusive as it once was....) And inceptor-ship is implied to

And if you're 15th or 16th you're throwing certain advantages like 'Sunlight is less lethal' into the equation.

There's alot of potential abuse in that and it seems rather odd this would be overlooked given how often they've looked down on hybrids as some filthy D&D-esque concept that dilutes the purity of the Storyteller system. I mean they weren't shy about discouraging it about Dhampir...

On the other hand I think it's also an interesting way to demonstrate how flexible and customizable the concept is, and V5 seems to want to go in this route (although I feel the Thin Blood concept there needs some rework if they want to make them 'distinctive, customizable vampires' and still retain some element of their original ToTB idea as described above.)

It's also an interesting way to demonstrate what the greatest strengths of the Anarchs are (flexibility, adaptability, a willingness to experiment) even if that strength can sometimes be its weakness (a tendency to infight and problems unifying.)

[False Epiphany]

V5 changed a lot about thin-bloods. They were a pretty diverse lot earlier. You could have...

* 14th gen vampires with a clan who were sort of quasi-thin-bloods, fuctioning identically to normal Kindred except for essentially 2 less blood points to use
* 14th gen vampires who were that, and Caitiff
* 14th gen vampires with the thin-blood flaw who belonged to a clan
* 14th gen vampires with the thin-blood flaw who were Caitiff
* 15th gen vampires who were universally thin-blooded Caitiff

V5 basically turns them all into thin-blooded Caitiff. I wouldn't say that was a bad decision, because thin-bloods are defined by the thin-blood flaw and "normal vampire with a clan but for 2 less blood points, who's sort of but not quite a thin-blood" was an interesting idea but fairly niche concept. If I were designing thin-bloods for a setting I'd start with actual thin-bloods first. Belonging to a clan also dilutes some of their themes (Beckett's Jyhad Diary does a great job playing up how Caitiff are perhaps the only Kindred truly free of an Antediluvian ancestor's machinations), so I can see giving that the axe too.

But the idea of a thin-blooded Toreador or Ventrue desperately trying to win their clan's acceptance is fun ("I'm not clanless! I'm one of you!"), so I might just have "Clan" as a Merit for thin-bloods to buy. You buy it, you have clan Disciplines and a clan bane, but you're still a thin-blood.

I'd still really like to see rules for Insight. I feel like it and Thin-Blood Alchemy should be the only Disciplines thin-bloods can permanently buy.

[Mister_Dunpeal]

I had mixed feelings about ToTB because while it had some ideas I don't think they fully developed them (and its a pattern we're seeing with them in 5th - good ideas, but the execution could be better.) The discrepancy on 'hybrids' in ToTB I alluded to above is one example (we hate powergaming Dhampirs, but its a-okay if you're a 14th or 15th generation cuz we still let you use mortal sorcery in addition to all the stuff you get from vampires and high generation like the inceptor talent.) Oh and lets not forget True Faith is still possible, too :V

But the whole 'All Thin Bloods are Caitiff' is another area that - as I think I mentioned elsewhere - wasn't fully fleshed out. It's not that big an issue or hard to reconcile, but the way they handled 'thin blood' vs high generation was really bizarre. IMHO the options for tweaking your character are tied less to generation and more to being thin blood. I could get SOME of those advantages applying to one, but I really feel like the Thin Blood trait never got fully developed because they loaded up the advantages on the 'high generation' flaws and in ways that made less sense (Thin Blooded can't make Ghouls or Vampires, but only 15th generation can make Dhampir? On top of being inceptors, seers, mortal sorcery AND resistant to sunlight?) Oh and if you're allowed to reach Golconda as 15th gen? You can get around those discipline limits as per ToTB too, whilst evidently losing none of the advantages. You still have the 'double cost' for augmenting or activating certain disciplines but... that's not a huge drawback at this point, really.

I had similar feelings about BJD and the 16th generation. More weaknesses than 15th but (as far as I can tell) no real benefits. At the very least you'd think 16th generation would take bashing damage from Sunlight rather than lethal considering all else they endured (and thematically it scales well. 15th take lethal and reach 3 dots in disciplines, 16th take bashing and reach 2 dots.. .dhampir take no damage and have one dot unless they are ghouled.)

I think the balancing would have been better handled by letting merits and flaws balance it out. Thin Blood and 14th and 15th generation are worth X points as a flaw, so you can spend that many points to gain certain merits (resistance to sunlight would be one.) Certain traits could still be paired together. For example Thin Bloods can't make Ghouls or Embrace but could make Dhampir, they might use 2 BP to use powers but also draw more sustenance from human and animal blood as per efficient digestion, etc. 14th and 15th could still be seers or inceptors. You could allow one 'free' merit to balance out the drawbacks (Thin bloods could make Dhampir or efficient digestion, 14th/15th gen could be inceptors or Seers, 15th gen could take lethal damage from sunlight) but depending on how you built the character you could still tailor it to your purposes.

This also allows an easier reconciliation between thin bloods and Caitiff because much of it is less tied to generation over the weakening of the curse. Which is ironic because ToTB does in fact imply this in Netchurch's analysis and they treat it as optional. Why only 'optional' rather than 'canonical' baffles me though given the aforementioned discrepancies. BJD's treatment of the thin blood is even more explicit. (interestingly too, BJD has a comment that blood can 'thicken' over time so someone that starts out thin blood can become 'normal', which seems to be a nod to V5's borrowing Blood Potency from Requiem.)

As far as TBA and Thinbloods: One idea I had developed to allow for more 'Media friendly' Vampires like D or Bloodrayne was that a Dhampir could 'bite' a vampire and drain its blood to 'ghoul' itself. It required a bit of modification to those Ghoul rules (like the Dhampir not permanently losing dots in certain disciplines like the physical ones, but I kept the blood bond risk.) This is something that could translate well into Thin Bloods in general (they can 'temporarily' gain disciplines from the blood of vampires Ghoul style) but they could also use TBA to 'fix' a certain number of powers for longer duration or gain others. Again it should be more a mix of mortal hedge magic and vampiric blood magic (likely anarch sorcery.) I should note that Mortal hedge magic was interesting because it allowed for magical ways to gain disciplines, garou gifts, etc. through concoctions and that is something that resonates VERY well with TBA. Blood Magic has plenty of 'alchemical' elements to it as well.

Alternately it's possible for Thin Bloods to 'learn' the knowledge of how to use the disciplines, but their blood normally does not have enough power on its own to fully utilize it. Draining vitae from other vampires, use of thin blood alchemy would be other methods but I also figured treating the 'two blood points to use vampire powers' issue as being akin to 'Blood of potency' ('thicken' the blood by spending more of it per use.) - a variation of the idea I presented above.

[CTPhipps]

You guys raise a lot of interesting points. Personally, I feel like the problem with Thin Bloods in previous editions was the fact they couldn't really figure out what they were going for with them. Blade and Vampire Hunter D are a very different characters from Lily from Bloodlines after all. I also feel like they weren't really ready to acknowledge a group that I believe are very important to social gaming.

Anti-Twinks

I've encountered a surprisingly large amount of these guys over the years and I think they're almost as common as their better known counterparts. They're people who LIKE playing weaker characters like ghouls, mortals, and high generation Cainites. The Duskborn appeal to them I think because they are the weakest vampires yet and ditch many of the special abilities that existed before.

The greater the challenge, the sweeter the victory.